


Authentic Selves

by emjam



Series: lgbtq+ gravity falls [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Genderqueer Mabel, Nonbinary Character, Trans Character, Trans Dipper, supportive family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 00:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8512255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emjam/pseuds/emjam
Summary: Dipper comes out to Mabel as a trans boy, and Mabel learns something about herself in turn.





	

Mabel listened to her favorite Sev’ral Timez album while she worked on a simple sweater for her sister, Maisie (commonly called Dipper), who had seemed kind of stressed lately. Mabel thought that a new, love-filled sweater by her favorite sister would cheer her up a bit.

The click and creak of the old attic door caused Mabel to lend her ears to something other than Deep Chris’s (admittedly beautiful and dreamy) vocals, though she didn’t look up from her unfinished piece. “Hey, Dipping Sauce!” She called. When that silly nickname didn’t elicit a response, she swiftly finished her current row and finally took her eyes off the blue yarn.

Dipper plodded over to her own bed and threw herself down onto it. “Mabel, I have to talk to you about something,” she stated, staring resolutely at the ceiling instead of daring to look her sister in the eye.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Mabel paused her music and put away her knitting.

A tense silence permeated the room for a few moments, punctuated by their breathing and the woodland sounds outside the open window. Dipper, in all her hesitation, finally came out with it.

“Do you know what transgender is?”

Mabel shook her head. “No, what’s that?”

Mabel’s sister sighed and fiddled with her blankets, rubbing the fabric between her hands and tugging at it, still lying down. “It's when you are born as one gender but identify as another.” After this initial explanation, the words rushed out of her mouth like running water out of a faucet. “I know I was told I was a girl when we were little and everything, but I think I'm really a guy. I don't like what's happening to my body at all, I hate everything about puberty. It feels wrong.” The disgust in her voice was tangible. “And “she” just sounds icky. I feel like a “he” more than anything else. It's… actually why I cut my hair so short this year. Mom and dad think it's a cute pixie cut but it's to make me more comfortable.”

“Oh, so you’re actually a boy?” Mabel cocked her head, attempting to understand. Her brother sat up on the edge of his bed and nodded excitedly, nervousness put on the back burner for the moment.

“Yes! I’m actually surprised you understood so quickly, my friends at school didn’t…” He trailed off, and Mabel’s face at that prompted him to explain. “I wanted to test the waters with them and came out to them but neither of them got it. They both thought I was really weird. They just… stopped hanging out with me.” Dipper looked down at his shoes. The mattress dipped, and he looked at Mabel out of the corner of his eyes.

“Hey. Look at me, Dipper.” He lifted his head to see her properly. “It doesn’t matter what they say. They’re a bunch of dumb-dumbs if they think that ditching you is a good idea. It’s their loss. And I’ll support you no matter what, okay?” Dipper leaned over and hugged her.

“Thank you so much, Mabel.”

“Anything for you, bro.” Dipper felt tears pricking his eyes at that. They parted, but remained next to each other on his bed. “I know this might be asking a lot, but can you help me come out to Grunkle Stan?”

“You bet! I’ll make it the best coming out experience of your _life_! Of course, if you don't mind a _lot_ of glitter.”

Dipper laughed, and for once, his squeaky, high voice didn’t bother him. “We’ll see.”

* * *

 Late that night, Mabel lay staring at the attic ceiling, clutching her unicorn stuffed animal and gaining comfort from its soft pulsating glow, even if its pre-recorded voice was merely promoting the toy line in the company’s attempts to get more money.

The ceiling was an interesting shade of brown, Mabel realized, as she examined it. Certainly not something she’d pick for a sweater or anything, but it had its own intriguing and entertaining qualities, like the mysterious mold growing in certain spots that may or may not be sentient. She felt like she had seen it move, but she could never be sure.

If Mabel had to be honest, she never felt comfortable as a she.

She always loved glitter and unicorns and pink, but she didn't have a particular feeling of being female. People would call her a girl and she knew that that's how everyone saw her, but she couldn't figure out why that felt so wrong. She didn’t even know that that was how she felt until now. She just… felt _other_. _She_ itched, but it had felt off her whole life. Was it really wrong, or was it just normal to feel uncomfortable like this?

However, her brother’s confession opened her mind to other possibilities. Transgender. The word picked at her brain; it stuck there, like a piece of gum you step on by accident that takes superhuman strength to remove from your shoe. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get to sleep. She tried counting sheep, and after that failed, counting little Waddleses, but even that didn’t work. _Why won’t it leave me alone? I know I’m not a guy like Dipper is…_

She looked over at her sleeping brother’s form. Dipper seemed to be finally getting some rest. Mabel hadn’t realized the toll that thinking about coming out had on him; this was the first night in about a week that she had seen him actually sleep peacefully. Recently, he would stay up all night scouring the journal that he already had memorized down to the careful cursive of the letters, or read pages upon pages of his summer reading, clicking his pen over and over.

She decided to let him get a reprieve from his worries instead of asking him questions at 2 in the morning, and huddled deeper into her blankets to try and convince her body that it needed to sleep.

* * *

 Mabel walked into her and Dipper’s shared bedroom. Dipper was lying down on his bed, a book sitting on his chest as he read - leisurely, this time, without any violent pen-mangling or furious page-flipping. “Mabel, have you started your summer reading yet?”

“Psh, naw,” she scoffed, and made her way to her own bed, got on her knees, and dug out her electronic piano from underneath.

Dipper spared a moment from his book to glare at her as if to say “the summer is half-over and you really need to get your life together,” before actually saying, “Well, the second book is actually really interesting. It's - "

He was interrupted by a dissonant chord played on the keyboard at top volume, and looked at her again. “Mabel!”

“Sorry, bro-bro, but I have some really important things to ask you and I needed to stop you before you bored me to death with - ugh - summer reading.” She shuddered as if presented with a horrific sight, and let her fingers meander around the keys. “So…” After fiddling around with the settings and mic for a few awkward moments, she put her mouth to the mic. A cool robot voice would make her feel a lot more comfortable asking this stuff. She steeled herself. “Dipper, you know about transgender stuff, right? Like, at least more than I do?” The robotic voice made Dipper pause and Mabel giggle for a second.

Dipper bookmarked his page, closed his book, and set it aside. “Um, probably?” He wasn't sure where she was going with this, which was kind of frightening, but he willed his heartbeat to slow down anyways, giving her the benefit of the doubt.

Mabel tried to fit her tongue around the words she wanted to say. Why did her heart feel like it was going to leap out of her body all of a sudden? “Are there… other ways to be transgender?”

“You mean, like, other genders besides guy and girl?” Dipper sat up. “Mabel, that's called nonbinary.”

“Whaaaaat?” She moved the microphone out of the way and spoke normally. “What does that mean?”

“There's a lot of genders out there that aren't just boy and girl. There's ones where you are kinda one or the other, there's ones where you're neither…” He started listing off on his fingers.

“Wait! What's that?”

“Um, well, it's complicated, but there's nonbinary in general, and genderqueer - why are you asking me all this stuff, anyways?”

“That! That's me!”

“What?”

She jumped off the bed. “Genderqueer! That’s totally me!” She ran up to a shocked Dipper and grabbed his shoulders. “Thank you so much, Dipper. I don’t know what I’d do without you!”

Dipper stood up and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. “Hey, no problem. I… can help you find different pronouns and stuff, if you want.”

“There’s other pronouns, too!?”

**Author's Note:**

> Mabel eventually chooses ae/aer pronouns but I didn't go into that here.
> 
> I actually had this written for like a month and a half and just didn't edit it until now (so this was actually finished before I published the other work in this series, which alludes to this. Good job self)


End file.
